


Sitting Shiva for Coulson

by Corvicula1979



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bruce is culturally sensitive, Coulson is Jewish, Gen, Grieving, Team Feels, Tony is Awkward, canon character death, steve roger's baking is a national resource
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-17
Updated: 2014-12-17
Packaged: 2018-03-01 18:16:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2782871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corvicula1979/pseuds/Corvicula1979
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Coulson is dead, but SHIELD hasn't released his body. Natasha decides she needs some way to mourn properly.  The others get involved too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sitting Shiva for Coulson

**Author's Note:**

> So I read a WWII (ie, Howling Commandos era) fic with a character called Ray Coulson who was Jewish. [LokiOfSassgard's "Midgard Legends": [ here ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/690230)]
> 
> This really has nothing to do with that fic, except that it inspired me to think, "what if?"
> 
> Lest I cause offense, and/or be seen to be culturally appropriating. I'm from a Jewish family, though I'm not practicing. Natasha isn't. For the sake of the fic, and also plot concerns like there isn't a burial because there's no body, there are a lot of finer details of mourning practices that are getting left out, here.
> 
> Basically it's just the stuff about friends making shiva calls and bringing food for the mourners.
> 
> Hopefully, dear readers, you will take it in the spirit offered, as a loving homage to parts of the tradition.
> 
> A couple of "of course" details: this is set right after the Avengers, so Thor isn't involved because he's in Asgard, and everyone involved really believes that Coulson's dead.
> 
> Golubtsy are the Russian variation of cabbage rolls.
> 
> This is unbeta'ed. Feel free to let me know if you catch mistakes.
> 
> ETA: The characters belong to Marvel, not me.

            After the Avengers had gathered to see Thor return to Asgard with Loki, Natasha had made herself scarce. Clint hadn't wanted to lean on her too hard with his problems – SHIELD had him seeing a psychiatrist for that, after all – but he did miss seeing her around, and he missed sparring with her for practice, and he missed her. She had been his best friend, before all the shit with Loki went down, and he hoped she still was. Eventually, he asked around at SHIELD HQ if anyone had seen her, and Hill told him she'd asked Fury for personal leave. He ended up finding her in an apartment she kept in New York, not a safe-house, just someplace she went when she didn't want to be in SHIELD barracks.

            Nat answered the door dressed more casually than he'd come to expect from her and looking more dishevelled than he'd ever seen her outside of missions gone badly south. Barefoot, shapeless workout pants of some kind, and a tee shirt with a tear across the chest – a _tear_ for heaven's sake – no makeup and her hair unkempt. Quite clearly she had not been out of her apartment that day, nor did she intend to. “Hey, Clint.”

            “Hey, yourself. Am I ... intruding? Is everything alright?”

            “No, it's okay, come on in.” So he did, and climbed to sit balanced on the back of her couch.

            Natasha closed the door and followed him into the living room. “Really? Get down from there.”

            “What?”

            “You know I don't care if you perch, but I don't want your dirty boots on my couch cushions. Off.”

            Clint slumped down onto the seat of the couch with an exaggerated, long-suffering sigh. “Priss,” he accused affectionately.

            “Uncouth barbarian,” she responded in the same tone.

            “I've missed seeing you around, Nat, and I'm guessing you've been holed up in here? Are you okay?”

            She only skewered him with a glare, and the joking mood between them was gone. He knew her well enough to be able to translate her glares with fair accuracy, and he was fairly sure this one was 'Of course I'm not okay, you utter moron.' And he was an insensitive moron, not to have realized it immediately.

            “Phil,” he said, not sure if it was a question or a statement. The agent had been more than their handler, he'd been a friend and, in a way, the closest thing either of them had to a father figure. Or an older brother, at least, if that concept weren't so completely poisoned for Clint.

            Tasha nodded. “I'm sitting _shiva_ for him.”

            It only halfway made sense. “You know he wasn't observant.”

            “I know.”

            “Are you ...?”

            “No. I was raised by the State, remember? A good little Soviet atheist. But there was a long, deep-cover mission once. I lived on a kibbutz for most of a year. I know and remember the forms, the traditions.”

            “When was that?”

            “Before I was with SHIELD. Anyway ... I don't know why they haven't released his body, why we can't have a funeral. But I needed a way to ...”

            “To remember. To mourn properly,” Clint finished for her.

            Natasha just nodded. “It seemed as good a way as any. And it feels respectful. Better than doing something from another tradition he had no connection to.”

            “So ... what do we do?”

            So she told him.

 

            Clint stayed for several hours. Some of that time was spent in silence, him holding her, her holding him. Some of that time was spent letting each other cry. And eventually, they started trading stories.

            “I remember how he would call us by our full names when we'd really screwed something up. Like the stereotypical mom. Not that I would know...” Natasha said.

            “Not like either of us would know,” he countered.

            “And the one time he stumbled on mine, despite being quite capable in Russian...”

            “Well, it _is_ rather more of a mouthful than mine.”

            “Yeah, laugh it up, mister. I'd like to point out I heard him call you Clinton Francis Barton _far_ more often than you ever heard my full name. He just didn't get enough practice with mine.”

            “Sure, Miss Perfect, or maybe it's because you had so many for him to choose from ...”

 

            “When I first brought you in, Phil and I had the mother of all arguments about it at the safe-house. 'What the hell were you thinking?!'” Clint said, in an imitation of Coulson's voice. “But when I _did_ tell him exactly what the hell I had been thinking, and explained all my reasons, eventually he came around and agreed with my decision. And when we brought you into HQ, he was the one who stood up to Fury to argue for you ... and with such conviction you would've sworn it had been his idea all along.”

            “I never knew that.”

            “You weren't meant to, well, not at the time.”

 

            Before Clint left that evening, he asked her, “Should I tell the others, or is this just an 'us' sort of thing?”

            “The others meaning the Avengers, or meaning other SHIELD staff?”

            “Either way.”

            “If you want to. Most of the team didn't know him that well. Your call.”

            “It's your apartment, though.”

            “I wouldn't be doing this if I minded other people visiting here. Visitors are kind of the _point_.”

            “I think, given the circumstances, even if the others didn't know him, they might feel the need ...”

            “To honour him. I agree. But not Fury. He's up to something, I can feel it.”

            “Didn't he sign off on your personal leave?”

            “Yes, but I didn't tell him what it was for.”

            “No guarantee he won't hear through the grapevine,” Clint pointed out.

            “If he shows up here, I'll threaten to put out his other eye,” she responded. “Barehanded.”

 

 

            Steve showed up the next day with homemade apple pie. Homemade by him. Natasha thanked him, and refrained from commenting how very _Captain America_ that was – apple pie? Really? To her surprise, he stayed for quite some time, listening to her stories about Coulson, and sharing some of his own about his army buddies from the war – some lost in battle, and some to the passage of time. And it was very good pie.

 

            Natasha had told Coulson once that sometimes she longed terribly for Russian food; even while it reminded her of darker days, irrationally it still felt like home at the same time. Maria Hill brought an enormous casserole of _golubtsy_ and another of cheese-filled blini. Had Coulson mentioned it to her at some point? Or had she just made a lucky guess that Russian dishes would be 'comfort food' to her? Somehow, that little gesture of kindness ... Natasha broke down in tears, surprising herself. Maria was shocked as well, never having seen Nat her without her stony, professional mask; but to her credit, she didn't hesitate to hold her while she sobbed. Maria didn't stay long, however, just long enough for her to settle after her crying spell and make sure she'd be alright.

 

            Tony brought outrageously fancy catered food, probably from the kind of restaurant that doesn't do delivery ... expect when Tony Stark asks. Pepper came along with him, with a bottle of vodka and some nice chocolates, and though she hadn't known Coulson well, she had clearly been fond of him. She said all the appropriate, nice sort of things, while Tony fidgeted. Natasha took pity on him eventually, and told him it was alright, she knew this wasn't his sort of thing, he could go back to his workshop and it wouldn't offend her. Tony looked relieved and all but dashed out the door; Pepper apologized for him as she took her leave.

            Bruce brought boxes of Thai take-out (vegetarian and therefore _pareve_ , because of course he'd thought of that), and apologized for not having made something home-cooked, despite Nat's protestations that it was _fine_ , really. He also brought a tin of his favourite tea, brewed it for both of them, and sat for a long time holding her hand in companionable silence. She had no need to speak and neither did he, but found his quiet presence remarkably soothing. Eventually he cleared his throat quietly, and spoke up more shyly than she'd ever heard him.

            “Uh, Natasha?” she looked at him, encouraging him with body language to go on. He continued, “I know the two of us are far from a _minyan_ , but ... would you like to recited the Kaddish together?”

            “You know it?” she asked. In their brief acquaintance she'd learned that Bruce was always full of surprises, but knowing that didn't give her any way to predict what the surprises would be. He nodded. She squeezed his arm and her eyes softened. “Yeah, Bruce. I'd like that very much.”

         

            Clint came to visit again, feeling he needed to make up for the first time, when he hadn't known what was going on, and hadn't brought, as he said, 'an offering of food.' Well, if you stretched the definition of the word. He brought beer and donuts. “You know this is what he would have appreciated, anyway.”

            “It's really about us, not about him, you know.”

            “Well then, it's what _I_ appreciate. Can I have the jelly-filled?”

            “You ought to try some of Steve's pie. There's still some left in the fridge.”

            “Cap brought you pie?”

            “Home-made,” she said with her usual tiny smirk.

            Clint took her suggestion, and returned to the living room with a slice. “Captain. America's. Home-made. Apple. Pie. You know, I am _never_ letting him live this down.”

            “Don't give him a hard time. It was really sweet of him. Besides, I'd hate for him to get discouraged from baking. It's damn good pie.”

            Clint tasted a forkful. “It is, at that. I'll be good.”

 

 

            Natasha reflected. All in all, she thought, this was probably how Phil would have wanted to be remembered and celebrated: with Clint's irreverent affection, with Hill's flawlessly executed support (based on knowing all the available intel), with Tony's awkwardly grandiose generosity, with Pepper's impeccably polite, perfectly socially correct condolences, with Bruce's culturally-aware kindness.

 

            And with his idol's All-American apple pie.  


End file.
